


Permanent Marks

by Trash_PandaTO



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Backstory, F/F, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-20 08:40:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13714056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trash_PandaTO/pseuds/Trash_PandaTO
Summary: Nicole Haught was four years old when her mother threw a fork at her in a fit of rage.She doesn’t remember if her mother just missed, or if her four year old instincts told her to duck, but she knows the fork left an indent in the family fridge at about the same height her face would have been.This is an attempt at creating a bit of a backstory to get at what makes Nicole Haught the person she is when she meets Waverly Earp.





	Permanent Marks

**Author's Note:**

> A heads-up: this story is a bit dark and includes mentions of growing up with an abusive parent. Please take care when reading or skip if this is not the right topic for you.

Nicole Haught was four years old when her mother threw a fork at her in a fit of rage. 

She doesn’t remember if her mother just missed, or if her four year old instincts told her to duck, but she knows the fork left an indent in the family fridge at about the same height her face would have been.

When she was six, her mother didn’t miss. That time, it was a dinner plate, and it hit her near her temple. She remembers blood pouring from her face and dripping on the kitchen floor in a strange pattern. She also remembers lying in the ER with a green sheet covering her face while some doctor stitched up the wound. Her friends in school told her it looked badass. Nicole didn’t want to talk about it.

Other times, things didn’t leave permanent marks on her skin. Bruises could be covered up with long sleeves and would fade. The words she heard hurled at her in anger stayed locked inside Nicole’s heart, for no one else to hear. 

Nicole did her best to keep that side of her life separate. Away from school, away from friends and friends’ parents.

Over the years, Nicole learned to avoid her mother when she was in one of her moods. She spent more time out of the house than in. There was school, basketball, softball, riding her bike through the neighbourhood, and there was her best friend, Susan.

Nicole and Susan were inseparable. When they weren’t tied up with sports and other after school activities, they were at Susan’s house. Susan’s mom was gentle and funny and calm even when things around her got hectic. She would always tell the girls that no matter what, everything was going to be alright. Nicole almost believed her.

When Nicole was 13, Susan’s mom got sick, and they moved away, to the coast to be closer to Susan’s grandparents. Nicole spent the next few weeks riding past their old house on her bike and staring at the empty windows. When Susan texted that her mom had died, Nicole asked her mother for a bus ticket to go to the funeral. She spent the evening in the ER with a dislocated wrist instead.

Nicole didn’t make it to the funeral, and she was too ashamed to tell Susan why. She received a few more texts and an email from Susan over the next few months, but she couldn’t bring herself to respond. She never saw Susan again.

Nicole was 15 when her mother caught her kissing a girl in the school parking lot. She remembers coming home to her mother sitting at the kitchen table with an unreadable expression. She handed Nicole a bus ticket to the small town where her aunt lived. She gave Nicole an hour to pack her things and left the house.

Nicole’s aunt wasn’t someone people would describe as warm, but she provided her niece with a place to live until she finished high school. The house was clean and safe and no one yelled. Mostly, Nicole didn’t talk much to her aunt at all, and that seemed to work out fine for both of them. When she left for college, she gave her aunt a stiff one-armed hug and watched the house and the town disappear in her rear view mirror.

Nicole was 18 when she slept with a girl for the first time. She had been in college for only a few short weeks when she met Jade. Jade was fun, and spontaneous, and said things like ‘Don’t just be a spectator in your own life, Nicole. Grab it by the horns!” Jade allowed her to explore, to try and fail, and only encouraged her to try again. For the first time in a long time Nicole felt appreciated.

Nicole and Jade hung around each other for a while, but both women were not in a place where they could be what the other needed in the longer term. They remained friends, though, and Nicole still gets the occasional email with photos of Jade in Thailand, Jade in Scotland, or Jade in front of some other landmark Nicole doesn’t recognize.

She spent the next few years putting herself through college and the Academy. She ended up with even more scars, although most of those were more or less self-inflicted. There’s a burn mark on her arm from when she worked in a kitchen during college, and a scar on her back where she slid off one of the obstacles during a training exercise as a cadet. There is also a missing fingertip from an attempt to use a fancy kitchen gadget that she bought online after a bit too much wine one night.

She met a few more women along the way, too. She shared her bed and body, and there was even a drunken shotgun wedding in Vegas, but she always ended things before she got asked to meet the parents.

Nicole Haught is 26 when she meets Waverly Earp.

She sees her across the street, hugging an older woman. She hears her laughing with the woman. Her boss tells her that Waverly is “the best there is”, and Nicole goes to introduce herself one morning, asking for coffee at a bar that’s not actually open yet.

Waverly is nice. She tells Nicole she is the nicest person in town and has a sash to prove it. Nicole doesn’t need to see the sash to believe her. Waverly draws her in like a moth to flame, and for the first time, Nicole wouldn’t actually mind meeting the parents. Except there are no parents to meet.

She meets Waverly’s sister instead, and that’s scary, but Nicole finds that she’s willing to do scary, for Waverly. 

She adds to her collection of scars when she drives for pancakes with said sister but encounters a revenant called Jack instead. But that scar leads to kisses on her boss’ couch, and to stolen moments in the office, and to more kisses in a barn, so Nicole doesn’t mind.

There are secrets, and danger and drama between sisters, but Nicole doesn’t mind, because she is starting to feel like she belongs. She does wear her bullet proof vest, though, just in case.

Nicole Haught is 27 when she lies in bed with Waverly and feels Waverly’s fingers gently trace the scar near her temple.

“What happened here?”

“My mother was angry a lot.”

Nicole doesn’t need to say anything else. That night, Waverly spends hours kissing every scar and invisible old bruise on Nicole’s body, whispering I love you’s and “you didn’t deserve that”.

That night, 23 years after the fork that missed her face, Nicole cries and finally feels like her wounds are beginning to heal.


End file.
